Warning: LPs and Plastic Sleeves!

Nightfall

Forgot I was going to post this. A friend of mine bought me the deluxe box set of Judas Priest "Nostradamus" for my birthday. Comes with three LPs and two CDs. The LPs were all in PVC type plastic sleeves which I thought nothing of when I first saw it. I later pulled them out to listen and look at what I found, hopefully this shows on the pictures well enough.







How could the record label not know this chemical reaction was going to happen?! So needless to say there are probably next to zero copies of this album on vinyl that aren't ruined. So disappointing but at least I can rip the CDs and listen to them. Two out of three of the LPs sound better than they look and even the one pictured above which is the worst is still "listenable".

I immediately threw away the plastic sleeves and stole three paper sleeves from three of my personally less desirable LPs.

Toolfan66

All my new albums go in mofi sleeves as soon as I get them...

Nightfall

I need to buy some of those. Have you ever tried and/or compared them to the Sleeve City sleeves?

MrBuhl

I use the Mofi and the Sleeve City Mofi clones interchangeably - they both seem about the same to me so just depends on cost per 50 which I'm using at the time. I use the Sleeve City "Disckeepers" on the everyday stuff.

DaveHo

In my experience the Sleeve City are thicker and go into the outer jackets without bunching as easily. I prefer them over the Mo-fi.

MrBuhl

It is surprising that record producers would use a reactive sleeve in this day and age though, especially at the price of new vinyl!

chumlie

DaveHo wrote: »

In my experience the Sleeve City are thicker and go into the outer jackets without bunching as easily. I prefer them over the Mo-fi.

Same here.

msg

wow, brand new out of the box?!?
that almost looks like someone used a wet cleaning solution and put them in sleeves before they were dry.

good post re: the inner sleebs - I'm just starting to shop this stuff.
ordered some stuff from Sleeve City and some samples of their inner sleeves. Their videos are informative, but sometimes you just gotta get hands on this stuff.

Nightfall

Yes, right out of the box.

nooshinjohn

Have you attempted any cleaning process on them yet?

Nightfall

Yes ran them through the Spinclean twice, the pictures are after that.

miner

Use an enzyme cleaner and let it sit for 3-4 mins, wipe off, then SC, then wipe off again. Vacuuming would be much better though.

Nightfall

What enzyme cleaner do you recommend?

voltz

I have used 2 different ones with really good results!

AI (Audio Intelligent) Premium Record cleaner Formula No. 15 its a great enzyme cleaner for heavy soiled records.

And MoFi's PLUS Enzyme Cleaner...it says for bad ones let sit for 3-5 then vacuum and use normal cleaner then rinse! basically what Miner said

Nightfall

You think it would remove a chemical reaction off an LP though?

voltz

not sure as I have not had a problem like that before, just looked at your pics better...dang that does look bad

but If you buy many used Record's I'd recommend having some on hand anyways. love to use it 1st on them and do the 3 step cleaning.

msg

Gyad I love this place.

MrBuhl

^^ totally agree ! ^^

Nitty Gritty Pure2 enzyme cleaner here. Cannot answer about the reaction though - same as Voltz, no experience.

pumpkinman

This happened a lot 40 years ago with PVC inner sleeves. I can't begin to believe that a company today would use these sleeves ????? The few LP's I've found used never did clean up enough for me. Even though I've never tried a commercial record cleaning solution I wouldn't be to hopeful that it would save the day. I would think the damage is irreversible.

But I'm usually wrong.

Nightfall

pumpkinman wrote: »

I can't begin to believe that a company today would use these sleeves ?????

This is my main issue too but believe it, this album was released in 2008. They HAD to have known about this issue, is there this little research done in record pressing plants today?

pglbook

Nightfall: Sorry to hear about the issue with your vinyl. Did you get it new? I bought that box set used at a local record store about 2 years ago and my records were fine. BTW, I was pleasantly surprised by that album. I know that it gets mixed reviews but I really love it. My favorite Priest album is Sad Wings of Destiny and Nostradamus reminded me of some of the songs on Sad Wings, before Priest went pop metal. I saw Priest live on the Metal Masters Tour in 2008 at Jones Beach Theater in NY (Judas Priest, Heaven & Hell, Motorhead) and they performed quite a few songs off of Nostradamus and they really rocked.

StantonZ

Anybody remember the old Discwasher brand LP sleeves? They were expensive (I think sold in 10-packs), but they were good; I have a bunch of them. Come to think of it, a lot of stuff Discwasher made was good.

msg

NF - can you post a photo of the sleeves these albums were in?
I'm shopping for inner sleeves, and see a lot of different kinds of "poly" based ones out there. Just trying to get a sense of what kind these are.

Nightfall

Hopefully this helps. Poly lined paper sleeves are just fine, these are thick PVC like a clear shower curtain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-_9Wh6u4j4

msg

woh, that video had me on the edge of my seat! Intense!!! I laughed at the end.

indeed - yes, I see the type of sleeves you're talking about now. I haven't seen anything like that, yet. yeah, so what's the story - is this something you can exchange?

Nightfall

She bought it used for me. I'm sure she could have returned it but I'm just going to keep it.

msg

so, I might have missed this - how *does* it play, anyway, and have you had a chance to try an enzyme on it, or is it a chem reaction?

man, I've been having my share of vinyl issues lately, too, and on new albums, even, which really surprised me. going to be testing my local shop's customer service here pretty soon - they're great at selling them to me, but I've already got two that have to go back, and several more to test. I would have tested them as I bought them, but didn't have a table at first, and then never suspected new albums would be problematic.

voltz

I bought the CD of this LP when it came out but now after seeing the video I wish I had bought the vinyl though after seeing what happened maybe not until its re released.

Dawgfish

I prefer the Sleeve City Disc Keeper sleeves also. Better bang for the buck imho.

StevieB

Nightfall wrote: »

Yes ran them through the Spinclean twice, the pictures are after that.

Maybe steam clean?

cnh

This thread has a lot of good info. I just lost or damaged a few dozen album covers in a basement flooding a month ago and need to find new sleeves for about 40-50 LPs. I am flattening the album covers out as best I can but will probably never be able to return the records to those covers because they're all warped. Fortunately I got all the LPs out in time. A few have a coating similar to the OP's problem but only a few!

Probably just re-sleeve everything with some product above and put them in a box with another box housing the somewhat warped LP covers-still in passable shape?